text: When the case reached the High Court on 16 February 2009, involving 18 families and the culmination of a ten-year legal process, evidence was put forward describing how, between 1985 and 1997, there existed a possibility that expectant mothers could have been affected by toxic waste which could either have travelled by air as a consequence of dust, or could have been ingested after landing on vegetables or other items. The area was constantly coated with a thick, red dust, including an open air market selling vegetables and other produce. The vehicles were uncovered, and there was no adherence to procedures such as the wheel washing of the vehicles. David Wilby, QC, leading counsel for the claimants, stated in court that one expert, in trying to convey the appearance of the minute particles hanging over the town at that time, had described it as an "atmospheric soup of toxic materials".
  With regard to the allegations that the council demonstrated a conflict of interest, Wilby stated: "Their motive - to a very considerable degree - was money. They looked to the Government and to the redevelopment organisations for the funds to redevelop the sites. They used that money to pay local contractors and the reality was that many of the contracts were awarded to friends or former work colleagues of members of the council." In 1997 police investigated allegations of corruption in the awarding of the contracts but the Crown Prosecution Service decided there was insufficient evidence to proceed.
  The presence and locations of the toxic waste was known before work began, having been stored in purpose-built "pits" around the site by British Steel, "in a form which was of no danger to anyone unless they fell in. But the effect of the works undertaken was to remove the majority of these materials and move them a long distance to other areas of Corby, and this involved vast numbers of vehicle movements."
  Professor Louise Parker PhD, Professor of Pediatrics and Community Health and Epidemiology at Dalhousie University, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada, testified that between 1989 and 1998 children in Corby were 2.5 times more likely to be born with upper limb defects than in the rest of the Kettering Health Authority area, which was statististically "quite significant".
  An internal report prepared by Corby Borough Council was uncovered which had raised the prospect of residents being exposed to high levels of zinc, arsenic, boron and nickel as a result of the reclamation works, and a separate report, from the council’s auditor, complained of incompetence and negligence by the council and said there was a "cavalier approach" to the operation. The families' counsel submitted that whether Corby Borough Council knew or should have known that the substances being transported around the town could have been hazardous to health was "hardly rocket science".
  Further, Wilby submitted that the Council committed a criminal act when they allowed the movement of toxic waste without a licence: in 1986 there was no proper permission in place for moving the contaminated waste, only for moving inert waste. Inspectors were not told the true nature of the substances involved and so took only sporadic samples from the site. Wilby said that the council had deliberately ignored the advice from experts to properly analyse the site because it was going to be an expensive task. He said: "They decided they were going to do this dig-and-dump. They thought we have got this great deal of land and all this spoil on this site which must be contaminated, we have got to get it off there because well never be able to sell it.'" Records demonstrated that in one test which took place in 1983 only five soil samples were collected to represent a  area.